Hispanic Students Require Income To Remain in School, Study Finds

Washington--To adequately address the Hispanic dropout rate,
educators must become more sensitive to such students' need for income,
according to a new study by the Hispanic Policy Development
Project.

The report recommends specifically that middle schools and high
schools be restructured to provide more opportunities to earn wages
while continuing schooling.

Programs targeting the needs of Hispanic dropouts, their families,
and their communities will have impact, the report says, only if
organizers "keep one fact firmly in mind: virtually all of them require
income."

"Too Late To Patch: Reconsidering Second-Chance Opportunities for
Hispanics and Other Dropouts" was one of five reports on at-risk youths
and their problems released here last week.

Its authors had originally intended to evaluate the services that
at-risk Hispanic youths were receiving in programs funded by the
federal Job Training Partnership Act.

But a survey of the programs available in 30 communities with
significant Hispanic populations revealed, they say in the report,
"that jtpa-funded programs essentially are not serving the nation's
at-risk youth."

This is true for a number of reasons, according to the report,
including the historic underfunding of the program and regulations that
have limited expenditures for support services and required high levels
of quantifiable success.

"By definition then," the report says, "the most needy are too
costly to serve."

It adds that "in most of the markets, no alternative funding source
is in place to support the kinds of programs that the neediest young
people require to make them employable."

Siobhan Nicolau, president and founder of the Hispanic Policy
Development Project, describes the report that eventually emerged from
the study as a "user-friendly book to give people background" on the
difficulties faced by at-risk youths, particularly Hispanics.

Earning While Learning

The report draws on other recent studies to convey the magnitude of
the problem. "Two-thirds of this nation's Hispanic youth lack the basic
skills they need to find stable employment that pays a living wage,
provides benefits and pensions, and offers genuine opportunity for
advancement," it says.

Further complicating the situation, the report notes, is the fact
that the Hispanic population is largely concentrated in the
metropolitan regions of four states--California, Florida, New York, and
Texas--"where they are rapidly becoming a majority of the
available--but ill-prepared--workforce."

But despite their common needs and goals, the public schools and the
job-training establishment have rarely cooperated with one another, the
report says, calling this one of the major obstacles to finding
effective solutions for problems in either field.

"Educators, until recently, involved themselves very little in
job-training matters or in the employment needs or realities of their
students," it says.

Citing data from the federal "High School and Beyond" longitudinal
study, the report notes that 41 percent of the Hispanic youths who drop
out of school do so for economic reasons.

In addition, it says, Hispanic males under 20 years of age--both
dropouts and high-school students--work more hours each week on average
than either white or black dropouts and students.

Policymakers must bear these economic facts in mind, the report
concludes, when devising programs to upgrade the skills of
disadvantaged Hispanics.

"If education and job-training programs do not provide stipends," it
says, "the scheduling of such programs must be made flexible to
accommodate the earning needs of participants."

'Strong, Personal Interventions'

The report also urges the personnel in schools and job-training
programs to provide "sustained personal attention" to students whose
social and economic backgrounds present obstacles to remaining in
school.

"Absent strong, personal interventions to support children's
self-esteem," it says, "many of the well-meaning measures to bring
their academic performances up to grade--placement in remediation
classes, or being kept back, for example--serve only to reinforce their
sense of inadequacy."

Both the programs and the young people they serve need to be held
accountable for results, the report maintains.

At-risk students "need help, yes, but they must be expected to
perform, and to comply with their side of the social contract," Ms.
Nicolau said at a press conference here.

For these students to be motivated to succeed, she added, they "must
see the connection between striving and achieving."

The report also offers an unusual strategy for upgrading the skills
of older dropouts. Contracts to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, it
says, should include provisions for hiring and retraining adults
deficient in basic and work-related skills.

Copies of "Too Late to Patch" are available for $5 each from the
Hispanic Information Center, Suite 310, 1001 Connecticut Ave., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 822-8414.

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